In computer processing, the actual speed of operation for users is based on numerous factors. One factor that may be of concern is the boot up speed. Boot up performance is a benchmark that is often used to compare operational speed of computer systems.
While much of boot up performance is a function of how fast the processor of in a system performs operations, an additional variable is the choice of boot up media and the efficiency of the boot up process. A network is one of the media types that may be utilized in booting up operating systems. A typical network boot may rely on the use of PXE (preboot execution environment) processes to enable a preboot environment. This is done to provide a network interface for downloading the OS (operating system) boot image.
However, conventional methods of network booting of an operating system may be inefficient. A conventional process generally may include setting up a ramdisk, downloading a network bootstrap program (NBP) to the ramdisk from a server, and running network bootstrap program to load the operating system. Thus, conventional remote bootloading may require that certain time-consuming operations be completed before the operating system can be initialized.